This is the official blog of the husband and wife writing team of Barry Andrew Chambers and Janice Chambers.
If you took Jane Austen's, EMMA, put her in a 21st century luxury resort hotel, surrounded her with a cast of off-beat characters that would feel at home in a Janet Evanovich novel… you would get Emma Wood, matchmaker.
Check out our "Bio to Bs" (behind the scenes) posts to read our personal stories that have found their way into our Emma Wood novels.

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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Decorating for Christmas on a budget

A few years ago when Hurricane Ike hit, it wiped out most our Christmas decorations. Although I was really glad that they were the only things lost, I was really sad, because I had been saving them for years. Our family thought of me as the Christmas fairy. So now, I am trying to decorate for cheap with ornaments from Walmart and Big Lots.
In years past, I took a couple of days and decorated for Christmas. This year, we have way too much going on, so I'm just doing a Christmas project a day.

DAY ONE:
Instead of buying a Christmas tree for our front door, I added "unbreakable" (I call them plastic) ornaments from Walmart. I added the glitter to make them more festive. And you can't tell it from the picture, but I also added a strand of 150 tiny white lights.

DAY TWO:
I added white ribbon, to eighteen feet of garland along with white lights and attached it to the railing on the upstairs bridge. After putting it up, I realized that the white ribbon wasn't showing up that well, so red ribbon is now on my list of things to buy the day after Christmas.

DAY THREE:
I used to do one of our trees in pink and white. Only a few of the ornaments made it. So I decided to do the entry with pink, white and gold. I displayed some of my original ornaments with some Walmart finds.

Guess which one is from Walmart?

The pinecone. I added the glitter. At Christmastime, anything can be made to look more elegant with glitter!

You can add ribbons to anything to make it more Christmassy.

DAY FOUR:
For this arrangement...it was all odds and ends. I had one poinsettia, 3 pieces of beaded fruit, some greenery, gold leaves, glittered berries from Walmart and some peacock feathers that I use for weddings and some birds that I found on sale at Hobby Lobby, last year. The candles were plain, but I added double stick tape and sprinkled them with glitter.

Glitter - it's a wonderful magical thing! Oh that must have been awful to lose your decorations. You've done a really pretty job of decorating with your "unbreakable" (I also call them plastic) ornaments. Newest follower, looking forward to seeing what you come up with :)

Nothing wrong with Christmas on a budget. Like you said, you can add some sparkle, and it's perfect! You've done a great job, and I think you still deserve your Christmas fairy title!New follower here from Blogging Buddies team.~Kimhttp://2justByou.blogspot.com